Miss Vyner was not beautiful; but she possessed an irresistible fascination. She was large, and rather heavy. She reminded one of a roughhewn granite statue of old Egypt; and she was just as magnificently imposing. Her hair was long, and strong, and wavy; her eyes very black and intrepid, but capable of liquid, languishing expressions, full of enchantment. Her nose, though thick and square at the end, had wide, sensitive nostrils; and her fine, red lips showed white and dazzling teeth. But it was the sense of power and plenitude of life which she possessed which gave her that natural authority, whose influence all felt, and few analysed or disputed.
She was quite aware that standing was a becoming posture, and that it gave to her a certain power over the girlish figures who seemed to sit at her feet. It was not long, however, before Kate felt an instinctive rebellion against the position assigned her; she knew that it put her in an unfair subordination; and she rose from her chair, and stood leaning against the Broadwood piano at her side. The action arrested Miss Vyner's attention. She stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence, and, looking steadily at Kate, said suavely, as she pushed the chair slightly,--
"No, thank you," answered Kate. "I have been sitting all day. I am tired of sitting."
Then Annabel gave her a still more searching look, and something came into Kate's eyes which she understood; for she smiled as she went on with her little dictation; but the thought in her heart was, "So you have thrown down the glove, Miss Atheling!"
Nothing however of this incipient defiance was noticeable; and Annabel's attention was almost immediately afterwards diverted from her companions. For in the middle of one of her fine descriptions of an Indian court, she observed a sudden loss of interest, and a simultaneous direction of every glance towards the upper end of the room. The Duchess was approaching, and with her, a young man in dinner costume. A crimson flush rushed over Kate's neck and face; she dropped her eyes, but could not restrain the faint smile that came and went like a flash of light.
"It is Lord Exham," she said in a low voice to Anne Warwick; and the Ladies nodded slightly, and continued a desultory conversation, they hardly knew what about. But Annabel stood erect and silent. She glanced once at Kate, and then turned the full blaze of her dazzling eyes upon the advancing nobleman. For once, their magnetic rays were ineffectual. The Duchess, on her son's arrival, had notified him of the ladies present; and Kate Atheling was the lodestar which drew his first attention. He had in the button-hole of his coat a few Michaelmas daisies, and after speaking to the other ladies, he put them into Kate's hand, saying, "I gathered them in Atheling garden. Do you remember the bush by the swing in the laurel walk? I thought you would like to have them." And Kate said "thank you" in the way that Piers perfectly understood and appreciated, though it seemed to be of the most formal kind.